


Lease Agreement

by maudeymaybe



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Implied Relationships, Jealousy, Romance, mentions of cheating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26228572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maudeymaybe/pseuds/maudeymaybe
Summary: Spencer loves your apartment, he just can't figure out why all of a sudden you don't want him in it.
Relationships: Spencer Reid & Reader, Spencer Reid/Original Character(s), Spencer Reid/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 104





	Lease Agreement

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from Tumblr

Spencer never thought that he could come to love a physical location, but the antithesis of that turned out to be your apartment. 

In his mind, he could rationalize this by saying that the apartment was an extension of you and because he loved you, it made sense that he loved your apartment as well. 

However, if he were being honest with himself, he knew that wasn’t it (or at least all of it). 

Your apartment was everything that his was not. Where his space was somber and academic, yours was bright and lively. It wasn’t that the decorations were childish, they just didn’t seem as serious as Spencer’s apartment which was littered with books and paperwork. When he was there, he felt like the world was not as bleak as it was made out to seem every day he did his job.

He also liked the community that you lived in. His apartment complex mostly housed older people, which meant that he didn’t have much opportunity to interact with people his age. You, on the other hand, lived in an up and coming neighborhood in DC filled with the kind of people that Spencer had once heard Rossi disdainfully refer to as ‘yuppies’. You were friends with most of your neighbors (most notably your landlord who he knew was one of your best friends) and much to Spencer’s surprise, they wholeheartedly embraced his presence in your life. Your friends didn’t think it was odd how intelligent Spencer was (or at least not odd in a bad way), rather they were excited to learn more from him by inviting him to their parties and meals (invitations he wholeheartedly accepted whenever he had the chance). 

Although the two of you hadn’t even been dating for a year, the combination of his strong affections for you and his absolute adoration for your apartment meant that Spencer was around quite often. He still had his apartment, but he slowly found himself moving more and more of his items to your place. He had a spare toothbrush on your bathroom counter, a few outfits in a drawer in your bedside table, and a section of one of your bookshelves had slowly been taken over by Spencer’s academic journals.

By the sixth month of your relationship, he was going straight to your apartment whenever he got back from a case. You always seemed more than happy to have him there, even giving him a key and your security code when you got tired of waking up in the middle of the night to let him in when his flights were late. 

Even his coworkers knew that if it was an evening without a case, Spencer could be found in your apartment. To Spencer, this was important because in the past he had been rather private when it came to his team and romantic relationships. When you mentioned in passing to him that you were thinking of having a party at your place, he had excitedly suggested inviting his team to attend. They did so happily, and Spencer couldn’t help but find himself indulging the fantasy that this was also his apartment and the two of you were hosting the party as a couple. 

When Spencer had first moved to DC, he’d relished in the fact that, in the form of his apartment, he finally had a place that was his own. He just hadn’t anticipated how lonely it would be, which was why your apartment was so important to him: it was a place that’s wasn’t his, but wanted him nonetheless.

While he loved the dinners and get togethers that you held, his favorite times in your apartment were when the two of you watched movies on your couch, just spending time together (Spencer also loved your furniture- his favorite piece being your bed). 

“Okay, do you want to watch Dr. Who or watch tonight’s episode of The Bachelor?” you asked from where you were cuddled up under his arm. 

“Well,” he said, pretending to think, “I think that if we don’t watch The Bachelor tonight, tomorrow you’ll complain about not being able to talk about it with the people in your office. So, let’s go with that.” 

You smiled up at him and picked up the remote, “And to think we haven’t even been together that long and I’ve already trained you so well.” 

The two of you sat in relative silence, watching the women on the screen vie for The Bachelor’s affections. Watching Reality Television had almost been a down side in the grand scheme of Spencer’s time at your apartment, but he found that he had actually grown to quite enjoy it. He liked profiling the behavior of the competitors to predict who would be getting that night’s roses (much to your chagrin- you liked the “surprise”). 

All of a sudden, your phone started buzzing. Spencer didn’t like texting, but he knew that it was how you communicated with your friends for the most part. They were probably texting you about the show, which they were no doubt watching as well. 

However, the texting continued and with every message you began to shift away from Spencer on the couch. At first he hadn’t noticed it (he took the behavioral profiling of The Bachelor contestants pretty seriously), but when he saw you frown at your phone and then sneak a glance at him, he knew something was up. 

“Who are you texting?” he asked, taking a small glance at the screen of her phone. 

Your eyes widened and you jerked the surface of the phone out of his line of sight. 

“No one,” you said, letting the phone fall into your lap. 

Spencer tried not to let it show that it had hurt his feelings. He didn’t have any issues with you having privacy, he just hadn’t considered that you would actively try to hide something from him. All of a sudden, his mind started to fill with theories about who you could have been texting and their probability of jeopardizing his relationship. 

Neither of you spoke for the rest of the episode, the two of you staring at the TV in awkward silence. When the show ended, you stood up and made your way to the front door of your apartment. 

“Thanks for coming, I’ve got an early day tomorrow so I should probably get to bed,” you said, watching Spencer from his place on the couch. 

Spencer looked at you, confusion dusting his features. You had never thanked him for coming to your apartment before. Your use of the word “I” in relation to getting to bed was also troublesome to him. He had expected to sleep at your apartment tonight, like he had done the night before and the night before that. Even though the two of you had not been dating very long, he felt like he knew you well enough to be able to tell if you were kicking him out. Surely, this wasn’t you kicking him out. 

“I’ll call you,” you said, opening the front door. 

Or not. 

Still confused, Spencer grabbed his satchel from the ground and got up to meet you at the door. As he passed you in the doorframe, you pressed a small kiss to his cheek which at least told him that you weren’t mad at him. 

It still meant that something was up, though. 

<3

A few days passed and Spencer hadn’t heard from you. He tried not to think too much about it, after all you both led busy lives and it wasn’t realistic that the two of you would devote every second of the day to one another. That didn’t stop him from missing you (and your apartment) though. 

Spencer never knew when he would get called away for a case, so he decided that it would be up to him to take the initiative and go and see you. He knew that you always kept your Sunday evenings free (you liked to joke that if God got to rest on the seventh day, so did you) so he resolved himself to go visit you under the guise of bringing you groceries. 

When he walked into the lobby of your apartment complex, your landlord (he didn’t know his name, just that everyone in the building affectionately referred to him as Bee) was standing by the elevator. He looked at Spencer with an expression that he couldn’t read (which was unusual because a large part of his job was about reading body language).

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone neutral. 

“I’m just bringing up some groceries to the apartment,” he said, trying to discern what he was trying to figure out.

“Will you be staying long?” Bee asked, his eyes following him as he entered the elevator and clicked the button for your floor.

“Uh, I’m not sure,” he replied, making a mental note to ask you about your friend’s weird behavior. 

“Alright,” he said as he watched the elevator doors close, “have a nice night, Dr. Reid.”

When he let himself into your apartment, he was surprised to see that you weren’t home. Not thinking much of it, he began to unload the groceries into your kitchen. He made sure to pay special care that everything was put in its rightful place, which he had memorized upon his first visit to your apartment. Whatever was going on, he didn’t want to make it worse by messing up the kitchen.

Looking around the empty apartment, Spencer felt calm. The sun lit up the room, the potted plants looked flush and green, and the air smelled like the candles that he knew you liked to burn in the evenings. 

It was Spencer’s perfect home. 

“Oh, shit. What are you doing here?” 

Spencer turned around to find you standing in the doorway. You were holding a To-Go bag and Spencer made a mental note of the restaurant so that he could bring you something from there next time he came to visit. 

“I brought you some groceries, I know you don’t like going shopping by yourself,” he said, coming to take your bag so that you didn’t have to hold it anymore. 

“How did you get in here?” 

“I used the key you gave me,” he replied, shifting some things around in the refrigerator to make space for your food. 

“Spencer.” 

When Spencer looked up, he could tell that you were starting to get irritated with him. It didn’t happen often, but when it did it tore Spencer’s apart. He couldn’t think of anything that he had done that would cause you to get mad at him, but that didn’t mean that it was completely out of the question. 

“Y-yes?” he asked, searching your face for the answer to his inner turmoil. 

“You can’t just show up here, you should call first or something,” you said, your eyes not leaving his. 

Spencer froze, not knowing what to say. Of anything you could’ve been upset about, he hadn’t been expecting that. He let himself into your apartment all of the time. In fact, sometimes he came specifically when he knew that you wouldn’t be there so that he could fix things around the house or drop off treats that he knew you would like (once he’d even brought Morgan in with him so that he could install better locks on your doors). He hadn’t known that it bothered you. 

“What do you mean?” he asked, “I come here all of the time.” 

“I know,” you said with a sigh, “but you should still let me know. It’s not like you live here.” 

That was probably the worst possible thing that you could have said to Spencer because as much as he liked to pretend that it wasn’t, it was true. He could entertain the fantasy all he wanted, but this was not his world. The serene apartment, the parties, the hipster friends, they weren’t for him. They belonged to a person who hadn’t seen the things that Spencer had seen, a person who didn’t know what Spencer knew. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, staring at the hard wood floors at his feet. 

“Did anyone see you come in here?” you asked. 

“No,” Spencer said, still looking at the ground, “just Bee.” 

“Shit, did he see you?”’ you asked, your eyes going wide. 

“He talked to me, he was behaving oddly. I was going to tell you about it when I saw you,” Spencer said, trying to control his breathing. 

He heard you swear under your breath and his head snapped up to look at your face. You were holding the bridge of your nose and looked as if you were thinking really hard. All of a sudden, the memory of a few nights before when you hid your phone from him came back to him. You had become defensive at the mention of your landlord, which was odd because he knew that the two of you were close. Although what with the sneaking around and the texting and not wanting him around he wondered if that meant...

“Are you cheating on me?” Spencer asked, eyes glued to your face so that he could analyze your micro-expressions at his words. 

“What?” you asked, taking a step back. 

“Is that why you’ve been hiding your phone and not inviting me over? Are you sleeping with Bee?” 

You opened your mouth and then closed it, searching for the words to say that would placate Spencer’s hostility. Taking your silence as confirmation, Spencer nodded to himself and turned to walk into your bedroom. 

“Spencer, what are you doing?” you asked, following him into your bedroom. 

“I’m taking my clothes back since clearly I’m not welcome here.” 

You followed him closely, trying to get between him and the drawer. 

“Spencer, I didn’t cheat on you!” you said, placing your hand on his shoulder. 

He softened at your touch and looked into your eyes. Now that he had taken a second to breathe, he was able to think a bit more clearly. He knew you weren’t the type to cheat on your significant other, but it still didn’t explain the text messages and why you didn’t want him to come over all of a sudden. 

“Then who was texting you?” he asked, “and why didn’t you want me to be here?” 

You took your hand off of him and crossed your arms, looking away. 

“It was Bee,” you murmured, “but I’m not cheating on you, I swear.” 

Spencer frowned and asked, “Then why did you do all of that?” 

“I-I didn’t think it was a big deal. We haven’t been together that long, I didn’t want it to start feeling too serious with you being here all of the time,” you said, still looking away from him. 

Silence. 

And then…

“Move.” 

“What?” you asked, surprised by the gruffness of Spencer’s voice. 

“Move,” he repeated, maneuvering around you to get to the drawer. 

He opened it roughly and began to angrily remove his clothes from their compartment. When he was satisfied with his collection, he turned around and walked back into the apartment and toward the door. 

“What are you doing?” you asked, confused by his reaction to your words. 

“I thought you were a dream come true,” he said, glaring at you, “I thought this was a dream come true. But obviously you’re not on the same page nor are you taking it seriously, so I’m just going to go.” 

You stopped in your tracks, taken aback by his biting words. You looked so hurt that Spencer almost dropped all of the clothes that he was holding to come over and comfort you. Instead, he chose to drop your spare key on your dining room table.

“Fine,” you yelled, “Go on then, leave. See if I care!” 

Not looking back, Spencer walked out of your apartment. He rode down the elevator, trying to get a good hold off his clothing as well as what had just happened. When he entered the lobby, he ignored the way that Bee watched him leave (as well as the overwhelming urge he felt to punch him in the face). 

Spencer had barely situated himself in his own apartment when he heard the doorbell ring. He almost ignored it because he wasn’t exactly in the mood for company right now, but he decided that if someone was actually knocking on his door, it was probably important. 

As he walked to get the door, he tried to push all of his thoughts about the fight he had just had with you out of his head. He hadn’t woken up this morning expecting that the two of you would be broken up by the evening. He tried not to think about what he would tell his coworkers (or worse, his mother who had grown accustomed to hearing about you) about the breakup. Most importantly, he tried not to think about you. 

Unfortunately, his decision to do that was complicated by it being your face he saw when he opened the door.

“A few months ago I renewed my lease and you read it over and summarized it to me, what did paragraph three say on the fourth line?” you asked, forgoing a greeting. 

“The tenant agrees to restrict the prolonged occupancy of the space to only the tenant or faces the possibility of fees or removal from the unit unless otherwise adjusted,” Spencer repeated automatically. 

You sighed and ran a hand through your hair. Spencer could tell that you had probably ran to the metro to get here because you were sweating a little bit (it also accounted for the time difference if your arrival as he assumed you had probably followed him shortly after his departure). 

“Bee did text me that day but it wasn’t because I was cheating on you. He was teasing me about having to re-negotiate my lease since I had someone living in the apartment with me,” you said. 

“But you don’t have someone else living there,” Spencer replied, “I definitely would have noticed if you did.” 

You laughed, “Spencer, you’re the one living in my apartment. That’s why he was being so weird when you walked into the lobby, he was planning on teasing me later.” 

“Oh,” he said, taking in the new information. 

“Did you mean it?” 

“Mean what?” he asked.

“What you said about me being a dream come true,” you answered. 

Spencer stopped to think. He had meant what he said, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to allow himself to be that vulnerable. Especially because you had made it clear that the relationship was not as serious as he had been taking it. 

“I think you did mean it,” you said before he could respond, “I think you do think our life together is a dream come true. And before you confirm or deny that, I just want you to know that I said the thing about us not being serious because I was scared.” 

“Of commitment?” he asked. 

“Of you leaving me,” you sighed, “So many guys have felt great and then the moment things start to seem serious, they bolt. I thought that maybe if you spent a little less time at my apartment you wouldn’t see what was happening and get freaked out.” 

Spencer felt relief wash over him. You did want him to be around, you just didn’t know how to tell him and that’s why you had yelled at him. He wasn’t the problem after all. 

“I’m not freaked out by our life together,” he said, “I love that we even have a life together in the first place. I love you so much.” 

You beamed, “I love you too, Spencer Reid.” 

Spencer crossed the threshold and brought you into his arms, hugging you against his chest so that he could plant a kiss on the top of your head. 

“Well are you going to invite me in?” you asked, your voice muffled by his chest. 

Spencer laughed and pulled you inside. You separated yourself from him and looked around. 

“I know it’s nothing like yours,” he said, “don’t hold it against me.” 

You ventured farther into the apartment, shaking your head. 

“Don’t even say that, this place is so you. It’s perfect.”


End file.
